STORM TRACK: March 31, 1981 (Volume 4 Issue 3)

Across this country, in scattered cities and towns -in quiet homes and apartments, small brown boxes and leather cases are coming off of shelves; specialized filters and lenses are lining up on tables; cameras are being dusted off, new batteries, gathering of maps, wheels aligned, engines oiled and tuned --- while, outside, green buds rise, wild field flowers lean on the windand soft, white mountains climb quietly -gathering- in the western sky.

The ST Capsule Hot-Line reports on chase plans this year: Randy Zipser has already been out several times, celebrating a recent promotion at work looks like he's about to settle down and become a serious "Okie from Muskogee"); If he catches the "big spike" this year, you may see it on NBC, thank you! The inventive P. T. Barnum of tornado chasers, Gene Moore, is THE weather man on Oklahoma City's KAUT TV news station, which may soon feature live simul-casts of tornadoes in-the-field -also, in the shopping mall, in your backyard, etc. (now even the arm chair quarterback can be a surrogate chaser between visits to the refrigerator). Jim Leonard will leave his hundred mile wide Gulf coast hurricanes and turn those barnacle encrusted lenses at our "bush league" storms in Okie-land. Between April 14 and May 7, he can be found at Zipser's. The Virginia tornado expert, Roy Britt, will try his second year of chasing along tornado alley -also quartered for part of this time (2nd or 3rd week in May) at Zipser's. Bob Maddox will demonstrate his deft steering and cat-like reflexes in northeastern Colorado and southwest Nebraska, where he will attempt to deposit a (Fujita inspired?) 300 lb. -armored and instrumented- cylinder in the path of a great, vortex (Good luck, Bob. We thank you in advance for all those years of faithful service -in case you're not around in June to hear it).

It could be a good year! The cracker barrel talk has it that odd years are traditionally good for tornadoes -this, since 1973 (Union City). Consequently, the "odd" people who chase should experience excellent bio-rhythms this spring.